Monthly Archives: May 2008

JIM CATHCART – WELL-KNOWN BUSINESS GURU AND PROFESSIONAL SPEAKER – ACCEPTS APPOINTMENT OF SENIOR ADVISOR AND SPOKESPERSON FOR SYNERGYSTREET.COM

Charlotte, NC – Tony Holden, founder of a new social networking site for business owners and entrepreneurs at www.SynergyStreet.com, has announced that Mr. Jim Cathcart has accepted the appointment of Senior Advisor and Spokesperson for SynergyStreet.

Jim Cathcart, CSP, CPAE, one of the most widely recognized professional speakers in the world, is founder and president of Cathcart Institute, Inc. and an advisor to the Schools of Business at Pepperdine University and California Lutheran University. As the author of 14 books and scores of recorded programs, his students number in the hundreds of thousands. He is a past president of the National Speakers Association (NSA), winner of the Cavett Award, member of the Speaker Hall of Fame (CPAE), Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), a member of the exclusive Speakers Roundtable, 20 of the world’s top speakers, and, in the year 2001, recipient of the Golden Gavel Award from Toastmasters International.

How SynergyStreet got connected with Jim Cathcart:
“Jim Cathcart is a master of growing High-Value Relationships. His own career is a reflection of this. When you list the names of the top speakers and authors in the business community you are also naming Jim’s contacts list. He’s in their address book and they are in his. I’ve seen him in action since 1989 and have been impressed with how widely admired he is among his colleagues and customers. He has received just about every honor that is bestowed upon professional speakers.”

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“Jim’s level of integrity, business acumen and reputation are what SynergyStreet wants for everyone. We know of no one more qualified to represent our community in the marketplace. We are thrilled that he has agreed to represent us as our Spokesperson and Senior Advisor. We encourage everyone to acquaint themselves with Jim by checking out his profile, blog and links to the storehouse of valuable information he has provided to the community at large and through his professional services as a speaker, author and trusted advisor.” –said Tony Holden, Founder & CEO of SynergyStreet.com

What Jim Cathcart has to say about SynergyStreet: “Today is the day for you to connect with as many trusted friends as you can and SynergyStreet is the place to do it. We grew up thinking that ‘Knowledge is Power’ and then discovered that the internet makes most knowledge available to everyone. So where is Power today? It is TRUST. The person with the most trust and acceptance among others is the person with the most power to succeed. Nobody makes it alone; we all need each other more than ever. “

“With SynergyStreet you now have a system within which you can connect and collaborate easily and safely. As you build your own community of trusted colleagues and friends you expand your capacity for success. Our goal at SynergyStreet is to make it easy and fun for you to conduct business and grow friendships. Our focus is bringing you Commerce, Community and Collaboration to expand your potential to succeed.”

Page ThreeCathcart Institute, Inc. has published a wide variety of learning resources in the area of human development. All of these are available as live in-person training programs as well as published works. Topics covered include: Sales Skills, Leadership, Professional Development, Self Improvement, Relationship Skills, Public Speaking, Self Motivation, Managing People, Psychology, Personality Styles, Sales Management, Marketing, Customer Relations, Customer Service Strategies, Strategic Planning, and Communication Skills.

Jim Cathcart’s works are published by the world’s top publishers: St. Martin’s Press, Leading Authorities Press, Dartnell, Penguin Putnam, Macmillan India, Prentice Hall, Nightingale Conant and the University of Southern California. Relationship Selling is now translated into Chinese, Japanese, German and Finnish. Jim’s works are available in print, on DVD, CD and online.

SynergyStreet considers Jim Cathcart to be exactly the kind of person who belongs on SynergyStreet.com and we welcome him as he welcomes you to our community. As Jim often says, “Join us and let’s discover just how much more successful you can be!”
End

The quickest way to assure that a relationship has high value is to GIVE high value to it.
By that I mean contributing value to the other person. If you want to be seen as important to them then they need to see and feel the benefits that come from staying connected with you. It’s is the “pay it forward” concept of giving before you expect to receive.

You can guarantee 100% customer loyalty in your business when you practice it this way.
Decide today that you will GIVE customer loyalty to all who do business with you. Don’t wait for them to be loyal to you, just start right now to treat them with commitment and continuing loyalty. If they never buy from you again, at least they will speak well of you and be impressed by your dedication to them as a customer. More often, they will become more loyal to you as well. People do business with those who show that they care.

When you call a company to inquire about how they can solve your problem, you don’t care nearly as much about their product quality, service reputation or expertise (at first) as you do about whether they care about helping you get your solution.
I once called a phone company to have an error corrected on my bill. After going through what seemed like thirty layers of “voice mail jail” I finally reached a technician who could solve the problem. But he seemed to be much more concerned about the process than the outcome. He kept saying, “you should have…” until finally I interrupted him. I said, “I know this is frustrating to you as it is annoying to me. How about just transferring me to someone who cares?”
He was stunned. He said, “I care!” I replied, “I couldn’t tell. It seemed to me that you were more bothered by what I had not done in the past than what could be done now to make things right.”
His tone changed completely and he assured me that his desire was to correct the situation. And he did. Ahhhhh! Finally we got past the process and focused on the result.

What we are all seeking in business dealings is someone who seems truly interested in filling our needs rather than scolding us about what “should” have happened. “Should have” is mostly useless. You can’t do anything with it. It doesn’t correct the situation nor does it improve the relationship. It merely lays blame and seeks guilt in response. So, let’s stop the insanity and start today to GIVE our loyalty to all our customers. The more we give the more we will tend to get. It’s the surest bet for customer retention out of all the things you could do.

To build High-Value Relationships begin to give more value to others each day. You can control what you give but you cannot control what they give. So pay it forward and enjoy the loyalty!
For more on this topic see Relationship Selling at Cathcart.com.

In 1985 my first Relationship Selling book was published in hardcover and a few years later it came out in softcover with Putnam Berkley. Upon arrival it was met with skepticism. People asked, “how can selling and relationships coexist?” Well, today we laugh at that question as being incredibly naive.

But even today there are those who think of “Relationship Selling” as merely being nice to people while hoping for a sale. That, too, is incredibly naive.

A relationship is a connection between people in which value is exchanged. To make a sale without establishing a trusting relationship is to be merely a vending source. But to build a high-trust relationship with someone and to also make a sale puts you in the position to easily get all the future purchases from that person. In other words, with a relationship, one sale can be the beginning of a lifetime of orders.

A Mass Mutual sales trainer Doug Macdonald once told me, “Jim, for the first 5 years you are in sales you will be underpaid relative to how hard you work. But if you form the right habits and develop the right relationships you will be overpaid for the rest of your career.” How true!

We need to see “Relationship Selling” as what I originally described it as being: a form of business friendship. We should become the business equivalent of a good friend to our clients. When we seek to serve them in that way we will find that every year our sales will grow without us having to increase our sales efforts. We will build on each sale to expand our network of high-value relationships.

At the Tulsa agency of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company in the late 1970s the general agent was Joe D. Willard. In a matter of just a few years he turned this agency around from near failure to winning the President’s Trophy twice in a five year period as one of the best out of 120+ agencies. I had the privilege of being “in on” that achievement.

Joe had hired me to conduct a seminar on goal setting for his agents in 1976 and he asked me to join his team in 1977 as an adviser and sales coach. Though my chosen path was professional speaking and consulting, he offered me an office and a monthly retainer to be his agency’s in-house sales coach and his personal confidant. What I learned in my six years with this account was invaluable.

One particular story stands out. Joe Willard had been a company leader for Mass Mutual in group insurance sales before taking over the Tulsa life Agency. So I asked him, “what do you do?” His reply was immediate, he said, “Do you remember the book PsychoCybernetics?”
I said, “Yes, it was written by Dr. Maxwell Maltz and it focused on ‘Self-Image’.” “That’s right,” Joe said. “In the book he said you should think like the person you want to become. So I did that and asked myself each day, ‘How would the sales leader do this work?’ It gave me the point of view and the motivation I needed, so I made more sales. Now I do the same thing as the General Agent and ask how the company’s leading agency would do what we are about to do.”

I was very impressed. Here was a man using a simple principle in the form of a question and with it he had lifted himself to excellence in sales and subsequently his agency to the top of the industry. I started talking about that in my speeches and as others adopted the practice they too were getting impressive results. One notable example, about whom I’ve written in my other books, is Tim Seward whose use of this daily question transformed his one-man auto-detailing business and his career into multi-millionaire status.

Now I offer it to you. Here is my suggestion: capture the graphic at the top of this article and look at it every day. Think about the goals you wish to achieve and then ask yourself several times a day, “How would the person (who had achieved these goals) I’d like to be do the things I’m about to do?”
The question will change your mindset from the present to the future YOU. Then you will be behaving as the person you wish to become instead of merely the person you are right now.
This simple mind shift has the potential to transform your life much as it has Joe Willard’s, Tim Seward’s and my own.

For more information on this check out my book or audio album “The Acorn Principle” at www.cathcart.com.

Here is a six-module program that I designed for one of my country club clients. It can be equally valuable for restaurants, resorts, hotels, spas or any entity in the hospitality industry. Think about how your own internal training and management development could use some of these ideas.

Each module can be done in a morning seminar format; maximum time 3 hours including group discussion and exercises.

The Primary Purpose of the training is to get all of the managers and supervisors onto the same page about: their jobs, the Club itself, the members/guests, and each other. This can become the “Signature Training” and be offered for each new generation of leaders in a variety of forms. The first round needs to be live seminars, but thereafter, it can be done in coaching sessions for smaller groups (involving some who have been through the live seminars as well) and with various training tools that you can build over time.

Relationship to the other Company Goals: It is essential that the entire team share the same “mindset” so that collaboration and cooperation occur without constant supervision being required. One big effect of this is that everyone can have the same intensity of concern for the profitable operation of the club and the continuing satisfaction of the members and guests. The team needs to see how each of them fits into the overall scheme of things here and how their contribution matters to our continuing success.

Goals of the Training:
These are the measurable outcomes that will be produced:
• Each manager will be able to explain how their role fits into the success of the club and its other departments
• Collaboration and communication between departments will be natural and constant
• Each person will know what they are paid to achieve and how they are to be held accountable
• Everyone will appreciate and understand the value of members and guests to our success
• Each person will see the importance of enhancing every point of contact with members and guests
• Everyone will value their coworkers and understand the interdependency we share
• Managers will continually improve in their understanding of how to read and lead people
• Self improvement will be constant among all who work at this Club
• All who work here will be proud of their affiliation with the club and each other
• Contributions of ideas for the improvement of the club will continually flow from all who are involved here.

Take a moment to review the above list once again, and this time; pause to think about the financial value each outcome holds for you.

Initial Training Modules: 1. “Welcome to The (name) Club”
2. Behavioral Economics: What Are You Accountable For?
3. Managing The Members’ & Guests’ Experience
4. Constant Never-ending Improvement
5. Reading People and Leading People
6. Being the Best You Have Ever Been

Module One: “Welcome to (name) Club” focuses on how we can each cause everyone to feel welcome here, including staff at all levels.
It addresses The Service Mindset, the reasons people join a club or choose a resort, their ways of measuring satisfaction and what motivates people to become more involved. This module also orients staff to the overall structure and operation of the club so that they see how all the parts fit together.
Participants are made aware of how clubs differ from hotels, resorts and restaurants. They are also shown the significance of this club and what it is that makes this a very special place. The purpose of module one is to make people proud to be working here, aware of what they’ve gotten themselves into by accepting employment here and excited about the potential that exists for them, even if they stay in their current positions.

Module Two: Behavioral Economics: What are you accountable for? This session shows how actions and lack of action relates to money. Participants learn to value action as never before. They see the “domino effect” of certain behaviors. Questions like, “who gets the fruits of your work and what do they do with it?” are answered and explored. People learn to create “Role Agreements” to help define their jobs here. Unlike a “job description”, a Role Agreement is a document that defines: 1. what you are paid to achieve, 2. the scope of your areas of responsibility, and 3. our expectations of you and your expectations of us. This leads to a very rich discussion of who does what and why. Also addressed is the subject of how conflicts can be addressed. Such techniques as “I have a concern” are explored and practiced. One valuable result of this session is the clarification of duties and responsibilities and another is the increased awareness of the economic value of current behaviors and ongoing standards of performance.

Module Three: Managing The Members’ & Guests’ Experience is designed to show how each touch point affects our success. This begins with an exploration of the “Moments of Truth” in our contact with others. They learn to distinguish the difference between Touch Points and Trust Points. Both golf and tennis metaphors are used to reinforce understanding related to all our functions from service to security to housekeeping, catering and maintenance. Member relations and dealings with coworkers and vendors are included in the mix. The structure called “Treating People With Ease” is used to show how all parts of the club and all behaviors of our associates contribute to our success. Participants are made acutely aware of the effect we each have on others and how our responsibilities transcend our “roles” and “duties”.

Module Four: Constant Never-ending Improvement is a module designed to stimulate creativity and communication. Methods of looking at familiar things in new and innovative ways are explored and practiced. Systems for communicating new ideas are discussed and explained. A culture of innovation is stimulated and new ideas are embraced instead of resisted. The idea of “Change” that is so often discussed in seminars and yet not implemented is transcended here. This workshop accepts change as normal and desirable while at the same time making everyone aware of how vitally important it is to have rock-solid standards and proven, unwavering systems in place in critical areas. Sameness and dependability are shown in proper perspective with innovation and change. Trust Points are revisited with an eye toward upgrading each of them. The concept of “Up-Serving” is embraced and put into practice.

Module Five: Reading People and Leading People is a workshop in personality differences and motivation. It explores personality types and much more. Participants learn to understand how complex and unique each person is while seeing simple and proven ways to adapt to those differences successfully. Concepts taught include: the four basic personality patterns and how to deal with them, differences in personal velocity, primary values, intellectual bandwidth, levels of thinking, respected sources, background imprint and “language” (meaning). There is an online questionnaire that each person can easily and quickly complete in order to prepare for this session. It produces a detailed profile of the person and shows them how to adapt to others more easily. This is based on the work of Cathcart Institute, Inc. in the creation of the following works: Relationship Strategies for Dealing with the Differences in People, The Acorn Principle, The Platinum Rule Assessment (coauthored with Dr. Tony Alessandra), and more.

Module Six: Being The Best You Have Ever Been is a seminar that sells each person on the importance of taking the initiative to constantly improve themselves. Without “self” improvement there is the need for constant supervision and motivation. However once people become more self motivated then they become worth more to their employer and coworkers every day they are on the job. So that participants can use this session to motivate and lead others Modes of Operation (modus operandi) are presented along with the appropriate response to help people grow beyond their current mode. Goal setting and self assessment exercises lead participants to clarify their own “motives” so they can be more self-motivated. People discuss and identify the things they will soon need to become good at, even before they are required to learn or master them. Resources for learning and growth are identified and people are encouraged to reach out for opportunities to grow. The definition of Self-Motivation used here is this: It is the ability to get yourself to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done whether you feel like it or not and still do it very well. The essence of this is seen in the “Daily Question: How would the person I’d like to be do the things I’m about to do?”

The foregoing will do a very powerful job of getting your team to a level where your job becomes easier every day.
I’m eager to explore this with you so drop me a note if you’d like more input.
In the Spirit of Service,
Jim

I grew up in the automobile era. As a baby boomer I remember that everything cool was about cars (or motorcycles). If you had a good car, you just had to customize it to express your own personality. My first car (in 1963) was a 1950 Plymouth Special Deluxe four door. It’s factory color was tan and it had a 97 horsepower flat-head six-cylinder engine with a standard shift on the steering column. As a teenager I was thrilled to have my own car but disgusted with how un-cool it looked.

To make matters worse the floorboards were rusted through and the driver’s door had been heavily dented in a collision. But it was mine! I spent weeks on end in the driveway with Dad replacing the old parts and renewing the car. We painted it “midnight metallic blue”, reupholstered the interior in “Naugahyde” (leather-like vinyl) and put cool hubcaps on it. I got a Corvette shift knob to put onto the column shift lever and added a boastful warning sign to the dashboard: “Do not exceed speeds of over 100 miles per hour for more than four hours under normal conditions.” (Remember now, I was a teenager and had no idea how dumb that seemed.) I named the car “The Heap” and painted a 3 inch square cartoon of a wrecked car just under “The Heap” on my left front fender. (Again, you’ve got to remember, this was a time when we thought it was cool to roll up your T-shirt sleeves, grease your hair, roll up your jeans to show off your white socks and hang a cigarette cynically out of your mouth.)

The engine was very old technology and it had barely enough horsepower to ascend all the hilly streets in western Little Rock, Arkansas. It burned about as much oil as gas too. I’d almost always have to add a quart of oil with each fill up. Luckily prices were comparatively low.

Now for the important part: its speed from a standing start up to sixty miles per hour “zero to sixty”.
That was the prime measure of a car’s power and competitive potential. “Take Off” was where the power was measured. Above 60mph is considered “Cruising Speed” and is much more efficient and enjoyable, but take off is where the noise is made, tires are worn out and fuel gets burned up fast. Those were the days of drag racing. (See the James Dean movie “Rebel without a Cause” for details. Or read old copies of the #1 auto magazine of the day “Hot Rod”.) Well, my old heap would barely do sixty on the same day that the race started so it didn’t see much competitive action. But it looked cool to me!

Now, are you ready for the big segue? Stay with me. Here it comes.
In the 1960s cars that could cover a quarter mile in under 20 seconds and could go zero to sixty in under 10 seconds were considered fast. One of my buddies had a car that would do 0 to 60 in 6 seconds and I remember dragsters that did a quarter mile in 9 seconds from a standing start! Today those numbers are considered mild. If you wanted to impress someone you’d spin your tires and race through the gears up to about sixty miles per hour. But there is another category where the 0 to 60 measure applied with equal levels of prejudice, (Here comes the transition…..) Age.

People who were between zero and sixty years old were considered mainstream and those over sixty were “old.” Nobody took 61+ people’s advice or considered them to be in touch with the real world. Remember the hippie slogan “Never trust anyone over thirty”? But today those 78 million Baby Boomers are turning 60+ at the rate of tens of thousands every single day! I’m currently 61. I was born on the first year of the boom, 1946, and graduated high school in its last year, 1964.

Along with this demographic shift there is a corresponding economic shift. We have seen the youth of the baby boom become the leaders of the world. George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and I were all born in 1946. Paul McCartney is just a bit older than me. Bill Gates is younger. John McCain is older. Hillary is about my age and Barack Obama is younger. But the vast majority of our nation’s wealth and power is vested in people who are no longer between zero and sixty.

Today the reframing of life to include 60 to 100 is an important consideration. If you reach “retirement” age and still have 30+ years of viable life ahead, you start looking for your next career. No more do we simply seek a part time job to supplement our pension. Today people are seeking bold new challenges and reasons to stay active and involved. You will see tens of thousands of former retirees re-entering the workforce with vigor in the coming years.
The one thing that keeps life and health intact is Purpose. We all need a challenge that is bigger than we are so that we can keep on growing. We need a sense of purpose in what we do. We must find meaning in our life and feel that we are truly necessary. This is much greater than just getting a secondary job.

It is also important to recognize that once you’ve traveled the career path once you don’t have the same patience during the second trip. Spending energy and time on things that don’t hold much value is seen as a waste and we quickly get bored and curious about new challenges. What we put up with in order to “pay our dues” the first time, we find to be depressingly meaningless on the second trip. So we want our efforts to matter and we want our voice to be heard.

I’ll write more on this later but make a note that challenge, contribution and meaning will be the vital factors in 60-100 careers. And there will be lots of job-hopping experimentation. We’ll be trying on second careers like new coats. If the fit isn’t near perfect, then we start searching again. But these 60-100 workers are great assets. They have experience, maturity, wisdom, patience and insight that you would never find in their younger counterparts. They can truly advance your business and serve your community as well. They insist on having meaningful and fulfilling lives with plenty of extra time for the grandkids and their latest adventures.

So, don’t let the lure of GenX, GenY or Millenials occupy all of your attention. There is a sea of talent out there seeking to recommit to productivity. Let’s all put on our thinking caps and restructure our working world to make room for the Cruiser Class.
Stay tuned to this Blog for more ideas and resources.
Jim